Revenge of the Ninja

[Ben Lehman]

So, on Wednesday, I said to Alexis "huh, I've got a really good idea for a mechanic for a ninja game." I wrote it down. Then, on Thursday, I fleshed out the skeleton a little bit and she, John, and I playtested the game. It was pretty fun.

Here's the basic mechanic: Ninjas have 8 techniques, which are rated 2-9 (lower is better.) When a Ninja wants to do something, usually, they make a plan. Like "I disguise myself as a guard, wait until the shift change, and then stab the new guy in the back and take his place." That's a three step plan involving Tricks, Patience, and Assassination.

So you've got a 6 Tricks, a 7 Patience, and a 3 Assassination. You roll 5 dice base, plus three as a bonus for your plan. They're d10s. First you roll all eight and count your dice equal to or higher than 6. If there aren't any, your plan fails. If there are, you set them aside. Then you roll and compare against 7, likewise same procedure. Then you roll and compare against 3. If you get at least one victory, you can bring in all your banked victories to add to it.

Oh, and just so you know, if you have no dice left because they're all banked, you fail.

When you fail, all you banked dice turn into Alarm and your target gets a chance to notice you. Also, you fail.

If you succeed, you get a bunch of Success, which is good for something.

Oh, yeah, and the Target rolls some dice as well, against your last roll. They can use their victories to reduce your victories, or increase their alert, or cause you harm.

Alarm gives the Target more dice. That's bad for you. The Target can also spend Alarm to fuck with you in various hideous ways: making you get spotted, making your mission objectives impossible, adding bonus dice to their various rolls.

That's my bad-ass ninja game. It's pretty bad ass.

But here's what sucks about it.

Right now, all of the abilities (exceptions: Escape and Confrontation, for various unimportant reasons) are basically the same. I mean, fictionally, Stealth is totally different from Patience, but they're mechanically interchangeable. I want to do the Agon thing where each of them is useful for a slightly different thing.

I also want some sort of meta-structure for character and clan advancement.

I've been thinking that maybe clans can by extra boosts to specific abilities, things like this:
Poison Mastery: If you finish with Devices used for Poison, add two to Success if you do not cancel.
or
Flickering Shadows: When using Stealth as part of a plan, you may increase your Technique rating by one or two.

That'd be interesting. But maybe I want those differentations in there from the start. I also want there to be a way for Ninja's stuff to matter more than it did in our playtest, when it was just color. I mean, yes, it's cool to just throw smoke-bombs around, but what if you're like "oh, shit, that was my last smoke bomb." That's cooler.

I have this idea that there's an over-arching structure to the game: Your ninja clan has been wronged, and wants revenge. So what you do is: you can't just charge into the bad-guy's place and take him down. Or, you can, but it's a bad idea. What you have to do is make set-up missions and take down his minions and build up Success (which should be useful somehow: right now all you can do is spend it to add to a roll, which is fine but it needs something else) so that you can take down the bad guy and get revenge. Then: next guy. These could also be things other than assassination: your ninja clan could want to take back over their ancestral town or something. The game system is pretty agnostic about it.

Anyway, it was a fun game to play, just struggling with the advancement and twisty little detail stuff. I'd love some thoughts on it.

[Emily Care]

What do ninjas care about?

[Ben Lehman]

What do ninjas care about?

Revenge, by way of mission success.

yrs--
--Ben

[Emily Care]

I have this idea that there's an over-arching structure to the game: Your ninja clan has been wronged, and wants revenge.

Are the pcs in the same clan or different?
How do you get the players to care about the wronging?
What color ninja do you get to play?

[Ben Lehman]

I have this idea that there's an over-arching structure to the game: Your ninja clan has been wronged, and wants revenge.

Are the pcs in the same clan or different?
How do you get the players to care about the wronging?
What color ninja do you get to play?

All of the PCs are of the same clan, automatically. I imagine that they make up the wrongs themselves, which should be a way to get them to invest in it. But we'll see, I haven't tried that part out yet. Any other ideas?

BLACK NINJA! There are no other colors of ninja.

Maybe I should do a little brainstorming pre-game where you start with a ninja's favorite color (black) and make a word web...

yrs--
--Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

Been playing Bliss Stage much? Sounds like the Bliss Stage you were going to do at one point.

What are the techniques? Is there a reason for all ninjas to have the same 8? Do you always roll 5 dice + number of steps? Can you double up steps with the same technique, like using Patience twice in the plan? Does the player have complete control over what his plan is like, or will he have to negotiate or dice about it, or will another player decide for him? How does it work when a plan goes awry or the enemy get proactive, and you have to improvise? Do you want Naruto-style superhero ninjas, Ninja Scroll -style magic ninjas or quasi-historical heroic ninjas like modern Japanese ninja action movies have? Do you play one ninja with a story or a clan that can and will sacrifice it's members when necessary? Can multiple ninjas share a mission, each rolling appropriate steps for the group, or are missions solo endeavours? Wouldn't roll-under be more intuitive for most people?

I'd love it if "improvisation" simply meant that you start going through the dicing system, except that you don't know for sure how many steps there'll be before payoff, or even what those steps are going to be. Sounds like a guy could potentially be thoroughly fucked by surprise, which kinda works for ninjas.

If I were in your boots I'd conflate equipment with all other preparations, such as information or Success from previous missions; knowing the schedules of the guards is just as useful as having the right length of rope for the castle's walls. Perhaps the mechanical function of equipment and other preparations could be the mitigation of the random factor: having appropriate tools for a given phase of the plan could allow you to reroll a number of dice, or continue despite failing the roll, or something like that. Thus the difference between a well-prepared and badly prepared mission are not so much in skill, but in what you do when the dice go awry. Of course, preparations are wasted whether you need them on the job or not, so a stingy clan might prefer to take risks. And the need for tools swings radically depending on the length of the mission and the suitability of your techniques to it.

I'm not convinced that clan-based feats are the way to go; it smacks of pretty dull niche-specialization where your choice of clan determines your choice of technique ratings, or vice versa. It would be preferable if clan specialties were orthogonal to the technique system, it seems to me, and usable with almost any technique. Or I guess all clans could have specialties for all or nearly all techniques.

To differentiate techniques, seek for generic, qualitative differences in possible mission situations that cross from fiction to procedure, and twist those. For example, Stealth could require each member of a ninja team to roll it in Stealth steps, while the other techniques require the group to pick one member who executes the step. This way Stealth has different (not worse, if I understand currency banking correctly here) implications for group missions and individual missions, allowing a group to quickly bank excess dice. Similarly Devices could be a mandatory technique for procuring (or activating during mission, perhaps) the aforementioned equipment benefits; perhaps equipment is slightly easier to come by mechanically compared to other preparation options (information, bought allies, whatever), but it limits your plan by enforcing one more more additional Devices steps in the plan. Patience could perhaps substitute or be added between other steps on the fly, and so on.

Hmm... that's all I've got for now. Seems promising to me.

[contracycle]

Regarding meta-structure etc.

What if the Villains Evil Plan was not apparent to the PC's, and therefore they do not know precisely how to strike back - at first.  Your clan has been wronged, but precisely why and perhaps even how is not clearly known.  This appears as something like an inverse puzzle, with explicit "unknowns".  Maybe your local chapter was invaded and burnt down; you first need to find out "who did it" and then "what did they take".  By enumerating these unknowns you create the necessity to complete multiple missions until the truth is revealed, and only then can you properly exact your icy revenge.  You can go for any of the required bits in whichever order, but you must fully reveal the evil plan before you can strike at the mastermind.

[DevP]

To differentiate the abilities, maybe each one puts constraints on what steps/outcomes can happen next, such that you interlock the various ability uses to find a plan you like. (Though, hopefully without creating an "optimal build" for plans.) So: Assassination can only follow Stealth or Patience. A violent action cannot follow Charm.

For the larger structure of the game: how about accruing bonuses / abilities for larger scale conflicts in the same system, either for your leader or patron or perhaps your clan as a whole? Your mission successes empowers the local political success of your patron which empowers the broader national success of your your patron.

[Ben Lehman]

Hi guys! Thanks!

Dev: I think that the core joy of the game is making the plans, and putting restrictions on how you put together a plan is sad.

I like the idea of chaining things together like that. I particular like playing the rewards up and down the allegiances of feudal life, family life, and so on. Maybe your clan can take on growing responsibilities for various things, or likewise attach itself ...

Gareth: Yes, unknowns. That'd be awesome. I like the idea that some things are known and some things are not know, so you could be like "Oh, man, we want to kill this Daimyo, but we don't know how" in which case mission objectives would be about discovering his weaknesses, or you could be like "Oh, man, we really want to kill the guy who ratted us out, but we don't know who it is" in which case mission objectives would be about tracking the guy down.

Eero: Yes, everyone in the game has the same eight techniques, which right now are: Stealth, Assassination, Confrontation, Escape, Balance, Misdirection, Devices, and Patience. It's important that everyone have the same set, because if someone does something to you, you have to roll the same thing to resist it. (This is why you want to Assassinate or Misdirect the powerful Samurai rather than Confront him.)

Ninjas roll 5 dice + a number of dice determined by the number of steps in the plan. It's not totally linear.

The planning player has complete control of what the plan is like, except that other people can glare at him and say he's stupid. The joy of the game is planning based on the situation that you're in, so that's important. Also, I'm thinking about introducing an "uncreative" penalty like in tRoS, where you start getting dice taken away if you do the same thing over and over.

Multiple ninjas can share a mission. They can even share a plan, if they're in the same location or worked it out beforehand! In which case each of them rolls their own dice for each step, but combine their banked dice for the effect in the end. This is really powerful, but it's also really awful if it backfires on you, which it did to John and Alexis.

The ninjas are the elite infiltrator / special ops ninjas of Japanese ninja movies. They don't have magic, but they're insanely well trained and smarter than everyone else around them. The game is about the ninja clan. Individual ninjas can have personality, motivation, advancement and so on but it's really not the focus.

It seems like you're talking like the ninja clan is like a Werewolf clan or something. It isn't, though! All the PCs are from the same clan, and the players define the characteristics of their clan together.

Improvisation means exactly that! But you don't get the bonus dice for the plan (naturally) so it's a little bit less powerful. On the other hand, it's much easier to control.

Thinking about differentiation. By character and by mission and such ...

yrs--
--Ben

[Simon C]

It seems ideal for there to be several interlocking tensions built into creating a plan, without there being too much restriction on what's plausible.  I think that you can have a neat risk/reward system by making more longwinded plans (stealth, stealth, assassination, escape) more effective, but also more costly, and more damaging if they fail? Perhaps what could be useful is a number of pools, rather than just "Alarm".  For example "Time" could be a pool as well.  Each mission needs to be completed within a certain amount of time.  Failure could burn through time, rather than raising alarm.  "Devices" could also be a pool, shared by all the Ninjas.  Different abilities interact differently with the different pools. 

In this way, creating a plan could be about checking which pools are high, against what abilities your ninja favours.  If you're running low on time, don't use patience, which burns time hard.  On the other hand, if the Alarm is high, patience can lower it, at the cost of time.  Stealth burns time, but it's strong against a high alarm.  Assassination doesn't burn much time, but it risks a high Alarm.  Confrontation is easier to pull off when the alarm is high, while Assassination is really hard.  Devices should be able to mimic the effects of any other ability, but it burns its own, special pool.  Possibly there's a fourth pool, for something else?  Maybe "Revenge", which goes up whenever you kill folk, and it makes it easier to kill more folk. 

[Callan S.]

How did the playtest go? The game doesn't sound very competition based/doesn't sound like you can lose. But the meat of play seems very tactics based, which doesn't investigate the idea of what getting revenge feels like for the ninja, or how far he'll go/what he's prepared to do to get revenge.

I'm interested in what the playtest contained, in relation to this.

[Ben Lehman]

Hey, Callan:

Well, John's guy got very badly hurt. He probably should have died, but we didn't have death and injury rules, so he just escaped eventually. Also, they failed at their primary objective (assassinate this dude) but succeeded at a secondary objective (kidnap his daughter.)

yrs--
--Ben

[Valamir]

I mean, fictionally, Stealth is totally different from Patience, but they're mechanically interchangeable. I want to do the Agon thing where each of them is useful for a slightly different thing

Stealth:  Banked Stealth Dice don't count towards Alarm
Assassination:  Dice Banked from Assassination or earlier step in plan is used to kill target (vs. target's "hitpoints")
Confrontation:  Banked Confrontation dice take two victories by the opponent to reduce
Escape:  Banked Escape dice can be used to "avoid damage"
Balance:  Successful Balance dice can be added to the next part of the plan instead of being Banked
Misdirection:  Banked Misdirection dice can be used to eliminate 2 dice that the opponent would roll
Devices:  If a Device roll succeeds player can elect to Bank dice based on the Device's score rather than successes
Patience:  If any roll fails, player can spend any Banked Patience Dice from earlier in the plan to reroll against the current TN.


Or something like that.

[Ben Lehman]

Yeah, Ralph, stuff like that. Thanks for the suggestions!  I like the stealth one in particular.

*chew* *chew* Clearly I need to play this game again.

yrs--
--Ben